There are a lot of P3P enabled sites using various old
versions of the P3P specification. Now would
be a good time to update to the latest version of the
P3P spec (January 28, 2002). For most people
this will require very few changes. If you are
compliant with one of the 2001 specs you may
be able to simply change the xmlns attribute
at the beginning of your policy and policy reference
file. (I can't guarantee that there won't be any
more changes to the P3P 1.0 spec until the W3C director
approves the spec, but at this point, its looking
pretty good that no more changes will be necessary.)
The W3C validator is up to date with the latest
spec, as is the IBM policy editor. The IBM
editor will even load in your old policy and
help you update it to the new spec.
One common error that a lot of sites have --
due in part to an error in a previous version of the
IBM editor -- is that their policy reference files
include the name of their policy files, but not the
name attribute from the policy itself. For example
the about attribute should be something like
"policy.xml#our-policy" -- many sites are missing
the #our-policy part. Also, the name attribute
should not include any spaces.
Most of the P3P user agents will currently work with
several of the old versions of the spec, so you
may not even realize you are using an old version.
The problem with the name attribute I mentioned
above can trigger some problems with IE6, however.
For example, if you ommit the policy name in the
policy reference file, the URL for your human-readable
privacy policy may not show up in the privacy report.
Lorrie